I just spent the last few days in sunny San Diego. Instead of enjoying the outdoor activities though, I was in a large room with hundreds of other people learning about the latest in standards-based web design. The conference, An Event Apart (AEA), had twelve top-notch speakers including Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer who started the conference. In my 18 years of being a professional web guy I have been to many conferences, but without a doubt AEA was my favorite…even better than WWDC. The mix of designers and developers was refreshing and given the limited number of attendees (~400) it was easy to talk with many. There were no “tracks”, simply one room, so no making tough choices on which sessions to attend. And the content. Not a single session was a snore fest. All the speakers presented beautifully engaging slides, sharing knowledge and best practices through stories, something I rarely experience in my day job.